


It’s Easy Being with You, Sacred Simplicity

by screaminginternally



Series: 'I'm in love with my princess. And I'm enquiring if she loves me too' [8]
Category: The Princess Diaries - All Media Types
Genre: Drabbles, F/M, Male-Female Friendship, based on my own AU series, dumb teenagers in love, i'm practicing writing these two more, none of this is related to the movies except the characters, unless i somehow specify that it is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-01-29 02:10:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21402448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screaminginternally/pseuds/screaminginternally
Summary: Some of these are set before my series, some during, some after.The first one is set before.
Relationships: Mia Thermopalis & Nicholas Devereaux, Nicholas Devereaux/Mia Thermopolis
Series: 'I'm in love with my princess. And I'm enquiring if she loves me too' [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1373011
Comments: 29
Kudos: 73





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some of these are set before my series, some during, some after.
> 
> The first one is set before.

Mia could hear the grumbling from the hallway. Who knew you could make egg shells crack that loudly? She stuck her head into the kitchen and, yep, there Nick was, scowling as he grabbed a whisk to beat the eggs into – it looked like flour.

“Everything okay?”

Nick’s head whipped up to look at her in the doorway and – is it possible to cook something with an angry glare alone? Also, no fifteen year old should ever look that mad if all they’re doing is _baking_.

Nick’s mouth twisted. “Everything is – _fine_.” Very convincing. The white-knuckle grip on the bowl definitely sells it.

“Sure about that?”

Nick puffed out his cheeks, his grip on the bowl immediately slackening. He blew out a breath, and his head rolled back to eyeball the ceiling. “I can’t get this freaking soufflé to rise properly and it’s driving me insane.”

“Seriously? That’s it?” Honestly, this wasn’t a weird thing for Nick to get mad over. Angry-baking was how Nick de-stressed, and when he couldn’t decompress with baking because of whatever flaw occurred while he baked, he just got angrier. “But you’re great at soufflés!”

“Chocolate soufflés, yeah. But I’m trying to bake different flavours, and it turns out I suck at them. Or at least I suck at using lemon for a soufflé flavour.”

“How many times have you tried?”

“This is my –“ Nick checked something to his left, “my sixth try.”

Mia widened her eyes. Okay – this was getting a bit out of hand. She walked over to Nick’s side, and the thing to his left was apparently five fully-baked lemon soufflés that – hadn’t risen. One looked a little more burnt than the others, two had giant cracks in the top (a big no-no for soufflés) one had clearly been filled a little _too_ much, given that it was spilling over the edge of the baking dish, and the other had too little filling. Mia bit her lip. “How about this is the last try today? Before you drive yourself insane?”

“Fine.”

It’s fun watching Nick bake – mostly because, despite his penchant for angry/stress-baking, he’s actually really good at it. Mia kinda sucks at baking – she can make brownies and cupcakes, but Nick honestly could go to actual culinary school and ace everything immediately, he’s that talented. Unless he screws something up, anyway. Then he gets pissy, then frustrated, then he crys a little, and then he gets it right. It’s like a procedure.

But Mia propped herself up on the kitchen counter next to the dud soufflés – something that probably would drive Grandmere to apoplexy if she saw her, but this was Nick’s home-manor-place, and his uncle definitely wouldn’t care. He was weirdly lenient when it came to Mia’s behaviour in his home, which Nick said was because Mia was his uncle’s favourite. How Mia was his favourite when he saw her less than eight times a year and Mia also didn’t like him very much was anyone’s guess, but whatever.

She grabbed a fork out of the drawer under her leg and dug into the discarded baking. Just because they weren’t flawless didn’t mean they weren’t still perfectly edible. And she was right. The cake was great.

(Of course, when Nick was still struggling to perfect the soufflé two days later, Mia’s opinion on it had changed somewhat, but that’s not the point.)


	2. Chapter 2

“It’s not that you’re wrong, exactly, you’re just extremely not right.” Nick said.

Mia gaped, “Well, you’re nothing but charm today, aren’t you?”

Nick stared at her over the top of his book, his blue eyes giving him the unfair advantage of a naturally-occurring piercing gaze. Mia had to work for hers.

“The word _butter_ is in the _name_, Mia. _Butter should not crunch_.”

“You will never convince me that smooth peanut butter is superior to crunchy. Never.”

“I don’t need to convince you to be right.”

“Ugh.” Mia refused to say anything more. It was an argument they had almost every summer, and Mia was always right, okay? Crunchy peanut butter is just better by its sheer existence, and anyone who disagrees is someone settling for a sad, this-is-going-to-stick-all-over-the-inside-of-your-mouth existence of smooth peanut-tasting glop. And if that was how Nick wanted to live, then so be it. Although . . . “Are you saying this because you know it’ll make me annoyed, or is this a cooking thing?”

Nick raised his eyebrows, his expression a _please elaborate_ one.

“Like, do you prefer smooth PB because it’s easier to cook with, or do you just have bad taste?” That last bit was rude, sure, but she and Nick had a strict ‘Blunt Honesty’ policy in their friendship.

How honest? Nick wasn’t even willing to give her an answer to her _completely innocent _question. He just hit her in the face with a couch pillow.


	3. Chapter 3

“I vote today to be a pyjama day.”

Nick looked over at where Mia was lounging on the couch. “Somehow, I don’t think your grandmother will go for that.”

“Ugh, fine. Pyjama _morning_, then.”

“That’s how Sundays work, Mia. Unless you’re going to church or work, I haven’t met someone who doesn’t have pyjama-Sunday mornings.”

Mia’s head popped up from the nest of blankets and cushions. Her brown hair was mussed into a rats nest on her head. Somehow, Nick found the sight cute. It might’ve been the pissy expression on her face.

“Can you stop be so nitpicky?” Mia huffed out. “You’re killing my vibe.”

That made Nick laugh. “What vibe?”

“My ‘determined to have a good time no matter the cost’ vibe. I don’t get to have it at Grandmere’s very often, so Let Me Have This.” Nick could hear the capitalised words.

“Okay, okay. I’ll shut up.”

“Thank you.”

It took a few minutes, but Nick has his nose buried back in his book when he heard the snuffly half-snores of Mia being asleep again. It was a talent of hers – put her in a quiet enough room, on a cosy enough couch, and she was got to pass the hell out, especially if she knew that she didn’t have anything better to do that day – and they didn’t, for once. Clarisse had gone off for the morning, visiting her sister, and his uncle was off doing whatever it was when he left Nick at Clarisse’s overnight. A shooting trip or to a country club or something. Nick was tried not to think about it very much. As long as his uncle couldn’t get to him, Nick could never find it in himself to care very much.

Nick gave Mia until the end of his chapter before he woke her back up – pyjama days were fun and all, for how rarely they happened, but Nick also wanted to _do_ something with his day.

Well. Right now he wanted pancakes. If he asked Gustav in the kitchen, maybe he’d let Nick make them himself. First things first, though – Mia’s legs were still draped over his lap. Her cold toes poked into Nick’s belly whenever he inhaled.

Nick grabbed one of the ankles resting on his thigh – maybe the left one? Mia had a habit of crossing her legs as she slept, like she was trying to keep both her feet from touching the mattress, that mattress being Nick right now – and shoved Mia’s legs away from him.

Mia grunted, but she didn’t wake up. How she claimed to be a light sleeper amazed him.

Nick made his way down to the kitchen – making sure to try and slide on the marble floor as much as possible, despite his socks definitely not being slippery enough to do it properly (he and Mia needed to have another game of Hallway-Sock-Slide soon. It was never as much fun unless there was another person there), he got to the kitchen quietly enough to avoid any of Clarisse’s servants.

Most of them were attached to the Palace, and joined Clarisse whenever she came to Miragnac over the summer seasons, but some were attached to Miragnac year-round, and often they oscillated between being grumpy all the time and being some of the friendliest people ever. It depended how often the part of the manor that was their purview had some minor flaw that Clarisse _always_ found.

Gustav let Nick take some of the pancakes he’d already made, instead of having Nick make them himself; and Gustav also had one of the maids – Claire, or Bridget, Nick didn’t catch her name, but it looked like Claire – go back to Mia’s room with a platter of fruits and pastries and a carafe of coffee.

Nick didn’t ask for any of this, by the way. Didn’t even imply that Mia wanted any of this. Mia’s just that beloved by her grandma’s staff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly didn't know what I was doing with this one. I thought it'd end funny. 🤷♀️


	4. Chapter 4

“Look, I may be jet-lagged beyond belief, but I think I know how to use a bed.”

“But that’s not a bed,” said Mia. “It’s my futon couch. It’s not a bed _yet_.”

“If you believe and try hard enough, anything is a bed, in whatever shape it comes in,” said Nick, the bags under his eyes etched deep and dark into his skin. He paused for a second, and then sneered, “_Amelia_,” in a way eerily reminiscent of Grandmere. Although Nick often mimicked Grandmere like that to make a point, what his point was this time wasn’t something Mia could decipher.

Of course, this was a pretty common state of being when you’re dealing with Nick Devereaux, at least in his exhausted state. He’s a common practitioner of big words and complex syntax, but if you make him stay awake for twenty hours straight and drag him through multiple time zones, he becomes pretty useless.

The same can be said of Mia, too, but Mia’s also pretty decent at sleeping on airplanes.

Nick was flopped onto the futon, one leg sticking out over the armrest. Mia had offered to help him pull the thing down into the pull-out bed that she and her mum had bought the thing for, but Nick had just said “Nope,” and then refused to stay standing any longer.

Mia watched as Fat Louie clambered his way up the futon’s cushions, before finally settling on Nick’s stomach. Either Fat Louie’s, well, _fat_ actually weighed in at nothing, or Nick was asleep after having his eyes closed for three seconds.

Fat Louie wasn’t actually very fond of people – he loved Mia, liked her Mum, tolerated Michael and Lilly and Tina and her Dad and Frank and the rest – but he’d taken to Nick pretty quickly, actually. Nick claimed that that was because Nick knew how to deal with cats: he had four back in Genovia, after all. None as big as Fat Louie, Mia could attest, but Nick had loved them all the same.

Although he may not end up loving Fat Louie as much as his own cats, given that her boy just stepped on Nick’s neck, jolting him awake in the worst way possible.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIRST: The Chapter  
Book-verse, between books 9 and 10 + Nick!verse

Mia’s sitting on her bed, flicking between her laptop, her history book, and her romance novel – sometimes in the same thirty seconds. Nick has honestly no idea what she’s trying to write, or if she’s just going to delete everything she’s written today. She’s done that about six times now. Spends hours meticulously typing out a couple pages, sometimes a whole chapter, and then she wakes up the next morning, re-reads it all and deletes half. Or all.

Ah, the life of a writer. It’s what she wants, it’s making her happy – and Nick is the one privileged with this trust, of what she’s doing and why and the little finicky details that she doesn’t want to bug Ms Martinez about, and talking through dialogue and scenes and whether or not they flow well with the previous few pages. It’s a privilege, honestly.

Nick could watch her at this forever.

* * *

Nick’s got flecks of cake batter on his cheek.

Mia wants to lick it off. Of course, she also wants to lick his whole face, and kiss it, and like, move in with him even though they’re in high school still, and she’s aching from Michael and JP and Lilly, but it’s like . . . have you ever left a situation that made you really unhappy, and when you get out and spend time with people that are actually good for you, so your life just generally improves as a whole, and then you look up at someone who’s been there for you the whole time, and you’re just like. _**Oh.** Oh, I’m in love with you_.

No one else? Just Mia? Okay then.


End file.
